Looks like the RPG beast won't keep me down even when I'm only interested in a small percentage of them being released. Tales of Legendia, just in time to take over my soul after spending 200 hours in the world of Dragon Quest VIII, comes out February 7th!

I've played the import for a few hours and here's what I deduced from that: The animation is this game is DAMN GOOD. Motion captured, I believe. The battle system moves back to one-plane 2D from the three-plane 2D of Rebirth and the pseudo 3D of Symphonia. This is the first Tales game with good music!! Overall, things seem a lot less complex than they did in Rebirth (simpler is better, in my opinion). So.. other than licking my wounds from Rebirth not getting released here I'm pretty excited for this one (a LOT more than the just-released Tales of the Abyss in Japan).

warswift

01-16-06, 08:31 AM

im a Tales fan so this is a must get.

PixyJunket

01-16-06, 08:46 AM

I just wish that another company would stand up and offer to get Tales of Destiny 2 and Tales of Rebirth released here. Altus or Nippon-Ichi would probably do a better job of handling this series to its target audience than Namco US will ever be capable of. I'm sure Legendia is only coming out because Nintendo properly marketed and sold Symphonia and now Namco thinks they can ride the wave Nintendo started.. we'll see how they handle this one.

nickdawgy

01-16-06, 03:04 PM

I still haven't finished Tales of Symphonia. Should I before this, or are they connected only by name and publisher?

PixyJunket

01-16-06, 03:15 PM

Each Tales game is a separate entity (save for Tales of Destiny 2, Japanese version).

boston george

01-16-06, 03:40 PM

Is this for DS? I hope so I love the Tales series, although I've only played Tales of Destiny 1 and 2.

PixyJunket

01-16-06, 03:45 PM

Nope, it's for the PS2.

The DS is getting a Tales game that looks pretty damn good and you can bet Nintendo will bring it over if Namco doesn't. Nintendo is responsible for getting Tales of Symphonia here and in March they'll be releasing the long-lost Tales of Phantasia for the GBA.

madara

01-16-06, 03:52 PM

Glad you made this Tales of Legendia thread already as I'm looking forward to it as well. I think I going to have a hard time with only one town feature though as I love traveling town to town helping folks and upgrading gear. But Grandia 3 is around the corner as well. Hopefully it will do better then last Tales PS2 game which I think was a terrible 50k(explaining why in Namco eyes we never seen the last few).

I wonder if this will get reviewed well in magazines though, anyone seen any yet? I take them for grain of salt myself so I dont have subs, but a fair guess is likely 7s unless someone really didnt like some of new features. Bebpo the main rpg reviewer at GAF had this to say basicly:

+Soundtrack is one of the best rpg soundtracks ever. Background graphics are good. I guess the Worldview is interesting and the story and characters are pretty solid. Cooking is nice this time around and the bread girl is funny.

-He complained that the Battle system is a bit boring as it's too easy and simple. No hi-ougi w/anime cut-ins. 30 hours of character quests have you going through the entire game TWICE with the exact same dungeons and even some of the same bosses. Very boring in that sense apparently but the ending FMVs for each quest are nice so it makes you want to finish it all. Says is no Abyss.

Compared to lastest Tales in japan now:
Tales of the Abyss

+Best story in a Tales game to date and one that holds up well against the quality rpg stories out there. Great cast of characters. Incredibly fun, flashy battle system with good depth. Really good dungeons with fun puzzles. Nice and challenging battles with intense boss fights. Really big game (around 60-70 hours) with a huge world map to explore. Costumes and mini-games rock. Art direction is impeccible.

- Music is still Sakuraba Tales music, hence midi-ish tunes that loop after 10 secs. Load times are bad on the world map.

PixyJunket

01-16-06, 04:25 PM

I'm glad I'm not the only one who hates Sakuraba's music. :D2:

The music in Legendia is amazing though.

PixyJunket

01-16-06, 05:42 PM

Free artbook with pre-order at most game stores.

fujishig

01-17-06, 10:36 AM

What, they couldn't up this release to January so I could use my Bestbuy coupon? :)

Looking forward to this, and if it does well, who knows what else might happen? Though there does seem to be an enormous glut of RPGs out there right now, especially in PS2 land. Anyone know how Symphonia did sales-wise on the Cube?

PixyJunket

02-02-06, 10:07 AM

I think I've decided against the artbook. I hate the art in this game. I hated the art in Symphonia and paid an extra $15 for the game to get a book which I've looked at once. If there's no sale on the game on release date, I'll go back and get an artbook.. but I'm not going to pass up another under $40 Fry's deal to get something that'll collect dust (now if it was a Mutsumi Inomata artbook, I'd pre-order three copies of the game!).

nickdawgy

02-03-06, 04:46 PM

Why does this game have to come out now? Between WoW, Wild Arms Alter Code F, Dragon Quest VIII, Wild Arms 4 (which I bought but haven't even tried yet), and Tales of Symphonia, I have too many good RPG's to play.

PixyJunket

02-06-06, 02:23 PM

Here's an interesting post from a Tales site I check every so often that interested me on Tales of Rebirth.

Y'know, this game's trademark is still active, and it'll be two years old in about a week. You're not really supposed to file them if you've no intention to release a product bearing it. So I would've assumed they'd have killed it by it now.

But interestingly, instead of killing it, Namco recently filed a request for a time extension to file a statement of use.

I can only conclude that perhaps the game's still possibly under consideration for release here.

Maybe the merger with Bandai could be working in our favor...

Of course, as usual with trademarks, all this can still amount to nothing.

Hopefully Legendia does well enough to warrant the other games coming out. Rebirth in particular. :D2:

warswift

02-06-06, 03:28 PM

I think I rather wait til the price goes down.

Outlaw

02-06-06, 05:36 PM

I'm trying to decide between this game and Grandia III. They both look really good.

PixyJunket

02-08-06, 11:32 AM

Well, Fry's ads are in and no price for this one.

Guess if I'm paying full price I might as well get the book.

Jtnguyen12

02-08-06, 12:34 PM

I'll wait till it drop down $20 (around Summer) beside too many Great RPG games coming out in 2006.

nickdawgy

02-08-06, 12:47 PM

I'll wait till it drop down $20 (around Summer) beside too many Great RPG games coming out in 2006.

No way this is $20 by summer.

Breakfast with Girls

02-08-06, 01:24 PM

Looks like the RPG beast won't keep me down even when I'm only interested in a small percentage of them being released. Tales of Legendia, just in time to take over my soul after spending 200 hours in the world of Dragon Quest VIII, comes out February 7th!Man, how do you find the time? I haven't even had the chance to play Dragon Quest VIII for weeks. I'm only 30 hours in or so.

I'd love to play Grandia III and Tales of Legendia, but who knows when that'll happen. :wacko:

PixyJunket

02-08-06, 01:56 PM

Man, how do you find the time? I haven't even had the chance to play Dragon Quest VIII for weeks. I'm only 30 hours in or so.Heh, I just don't have much to do outside of work. If it's any consolation I did feel like I melted my brain with how quickly I beat Dragon Quest VIII (or how much I played in that timespan).. though frightfully people were finishing it the week it came out.

PixyJunket

02-08-06, 05:40 PM

A hint of things to come?

The manual has a "sort of" teaser for Tales of the Abyss on the back. :D2:

PixyJunket

02-09-06, 08:25 AM

I only played about an hour last night.. partially due to excitement that Kingdom Hearts II finally has a date and partially due to me having already played the first few hours of the game in Japanese. But, it looks like they didn't gyp us out of voice acting during the character skits this time and I was happy to see that kept the singing Bandam Bouncers (and managed to do it well at that).

fujishig

02-10-06, 10:57 AM

Yeehaw! Tales is on sale in the Friday Fry's ad, 39.99!

Not as good as 37.99, but what's a couple of bucks?

PixyJunket

02-15-06, 08:41 AM

I think this may be my favorite US released Tales game. :D2:

PixyJunket

03-08-06, 07:27 AM

I beat the main game over the weekend and started the second quest. I really like the way this was executed because it doesn't take 60-80 hours to get closure on the game.. but at the same time if you're enjoying the gameplay or characters you can take it that 60-80 hour mark. Other than some frequent and overtly long cut-scenes this is right up there with Dragon Quest VIII in its new old-school style.

Fucking amazing soundtrack! The orchestral pieces near the end of the game blew my mind. The two variations of the vocal choir theme with the mad violin work instantly shot up to the top of my all-time favorite video game music.